Accompanying guidebook to the EEG biofeedback protocol for Work in Progress 3.
This is the start of the EEG Biofeedback Protocol. The plan is to receive and parse the data from a consumer brainwave reader called the Neurosky Mindset, then visualize this data in a Processing sketch. For those unfamiliar, Processing is an open source programming language and you can find out more from here.
The first step is to find information on how to connect the Mindset to Processing. After some intense googling, I have found Proxy’s sketch (which can be found here) to be the most usable. Most of the other libraries I have found (plug-ins for Processing) are broken. A point to note is that the code from proxy is slightly different, there is no external library, instead it receives data from a program developed by Neurosky called the Thinkgear Connector.
For a start, I studied the codes with the help of Andreas Schlegel (lecturer from LASALLE’s Media Lab). I wanted to do some simple variables with the attention and meditation values. I swapped out the default colors for a hue cycling graph.
Above is a 13 minutes recording of my brainwaves, data shows the attention and meditation levels during that period. The data was read and analyzed by a Neurosky Mindset (pictured below with me) and visualized through a Processing Sketch.
As you can see, in the meditation section, there are a few peaks (purple regions). These peaks coincide with my relaxation techniques, whereby I imagine a circle breathing exactly like me (I know, strange as hell). Another point, is that after these relaxation technique, I would open my eyes to check on the readings from the Processing sketch and when I do that, it reflects in the attention section with a rise in reading.
The next step would be to figure out which part of the data are the brainwaves (e.g. Alpha, Beta, Delta etc.). These values are within the chunk of hexadecimal data that the Neurosky Mindset feeds every second. For some reason, the Communication Protocol Guide from Neurosky doesn’t quite tally up with the current string of data I have.
A video presentation to visualize the results from a survey. The process involved 25 participants in a face to face interview to gather opinions and evaluate how effective the booklets were at communicating key topics, such as prevalence and impact of insomnia. Apart from that, I also asked them to evaluate the art direction and how effective it was at making the content more engaging.
The results were rather favorable and I received positive ratings for all sections. Constructive feedback pertaining to how the information in the booklets should be organized were echoed within most of the 25 participants.
From here, I will actually scrap the whole art direction and adopt something along the lines of glitch more. There are 2 reasons to that, the first is to do with the second phrase of the project, which involves Processing. It certainly seems that Processing yields a futuristic direction, something that is entirely opposite in terms of art direction to this. The second reason is from a subtle notion: glitch art is very much akin to the brain while asleep, it is like a storm with the brain working endlessly. However, this changing of art direction is still sitting on the fence, and only after a good draft of the EEG biofeedback programme is done, can be decision be made.
